[A few of the soldiers go out, Calchas comes in.
Scene III
Agamemnon, Pyrrhus, Calchas.
Agamemnon. [To Calchas.] Thou, who hast freed the anchors of the fleet;
Ended the war's delay; and by thy arts
Hast opened heaven; to whom the secret things
Revealed in sacrifice, in shaken earth,
And star that draws through heaven its flaming length, 360
Are messengers of fate; whose words have been
To me the words of doom; speak, Calchas, tell
What thing the god commands, and govern us
By thy wise counsels.
Calchas. Fate a pathway grants
To Grecians only at the wonted price. 365
A virgin must be slain upon the tomb
Of the Thessalian leader, and adorned
In robes like those Thessalian virgins wear
To grace their bridals, or Ionian maids,
Or damsels of Mycene; and the bride 370
Shall be by Pyrrhus to his father brought—
So is she rightly wed. Yet not alone
Is this the cause that holds our ships in port,
But blood must flow for blood, and nobler blood
Than thine, Polyxena. Whom fate demands— 375
Grandchild of Priam, Hector's only son—
Hurled headlong from Troy's wall shall meet his death;
Then shall our thousand sails make white the strait.
Scene IV
Chorus of Trojan Women.
Is it true, or does an idle story
Make the timid dream that after death, 380
When the loved one shuts the wearied eyelids,
When the last day's sun has come and gone,
And the funeral urn has hid the ashes,
He shall still live on among the shades?
Does it not avail to bear the dear one 385
To the grave? Must misery still endure
Longer life beyond? Does not all perish
When the fleeting spirit fades in air
Cloudlike? When the dreaded fire is lighted
'Neath the body, does no part remain? 390
Whatsoe'er the rising sun or setting
Sees; whatever ebbing tide or flood
Of the ocean with blue waters washes,
Time with Pegasean flight destroys.
Like the sweep of whirling constellations, 395
Like the circling of their king the sun,
Haste the ages. As obliquely turning
Hecate speeds, so all must seek their fate;
He who touches once the gloomy water
Sacred to the god, exists no more. 400
As the sordid smoke from smoldering embers
Swiftly dies, or as a heavy cloud,
That the north wind scatters, ends its being,
So the soul that rules us slips away;
After death is nothing; death is nothing 405
But the last mete of a swift-run race,
Which to eager souls gives hope, to fearful
Sets a limit to their fears. Believe
Eager time and the abyss engulf us;
Death is fatal to the flesh, nor spares 410
Spirit even; Tænaris, the kingdom
Of the gloomy monarch, and the door
Where sits Cerberus and guards the portal,
Are but empty rumors, senseless names,
Fables vain, that trouble anxious sleep. 415
Ask you whither go we after death?
Where they lie who never have been born.